Hortonworks ups its security and data governance game with HDP 2.5

Hadoop distribution vendor, Hortonworks, announced HDP 2.5 at Hadoop Summit, along with an expansion to its Partnerworks program and a reseller agreement with self-service BI on Hadoop specialist AtScale.

At Hadoop Summit in San Jose Tuesday Hortonworks announced a new release of its Hortonworks Data Platform (HDP) Hadoop distribution, an expansion of its Partnerworks program and a new partnership with AtScale, provider of a self-service Business Intelligence (BI) platform for Hadoop.

"There has been a marked change around the business conversations that are being held around Hadoop and big data," says Matt Morgan, vice president of product and alliance marketing at Hortonworks. "The conversations have completely shifted. It's about transformational use cases."

Those transformational use cases range from self-driving automobiles to predictive actuarial tables in the insurance industry, Morgan says.

To support that shifting conversation, Hortonworks will introduce HDP 2.5 in the third quarter of 2016. The latest release of HDP will include the integration of comprehensive security and trusted data governance to define and implement dynamic classification-based security policies. It leverages Apache Atlas to classify and assign metadata tags, which are then enforced through Apache Ranger to enable various access policies. Atlas, created by the Data Governance Initiative (which includes Aetna, Target, Merck, Schlumberger, SAS and SAP) now also provides cross-component lineage.

Hortonworks is also expanding its Partnerworks program to include new offerings for Managed Service Providers (MSPs). Morgan says the new MSP program provides a support-focused partnering approach for companies delivering managed services that include Hortonworks products. Hortonworks has also updated its ISV/IHV program to offer qualified partners expanded joint go-to-market capabilities for certified applications enabling Connected Data Platforms.

Finally, Hortonworks announced an agreement to resell AtScale's self-service BI platform for Hadoop.

"Our customers want simpler and faster ways to get insights out of the data they've stored in Connected Data Platforms," Scott Gnau, CTO of Hortonworks, said in a statement Tuesday. "This partnership will allow both companies to accelerate the adoption of BI on Hadoop and allow business users to create more value from all of their data."

"From day one, our goal has been to make BI and Hadoop work in harmony by erasing the friction associated with moving data and forcing end users to learn new BI tools," AtScale Founder and CEO Dave Mariani added in a statement Tuesday. "Hortonworks joins us in this vision and they are the perfect partner to help achieve this goal: They have a large distributed presence, a vibrant partner ecosystem and a market approach that makes AtScale technology available to millions of people."

The new partners already have a working relationship. In addition to a number of existing shared customers, AtScale has been available on Microsoft Azure HDInsight, built on HDP.